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Source identified
“A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth.”

Aesop · Fictional character · Wise man of the village

Source
Aesop’s Fables — The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf
Date
Traditional
Attribution
Source identified
Voice / speaker
Fictional character · Wise man of the village
Meaning

What does this quote mean?

Repeated deception damages credibility beyond the original lie: once listeners have learned to expect false alarms, even a later truthful warning can fail to restore belief in time.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Joseph Jacobs, The Fables of Aesop, “The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf,” Project Gutenberg #28. The wise man of the village gives the moral after the boy’s repeated false cries cause the villagers to ignore his real warning.

Primary / edition source ↗

Voice attribution

Who voices the line?

Fictional character · Wise man of the village. In Joseph Jacobs’s version of “The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf,” the wise man gives this moral after the villagers stop responding to the boy’s false alarms.

The source author and the local speaker can be different, especially in fiction, drama, dialogue and poetry.

Attribution

How should this attribution be read?

This wording is connected with the named source shown above. Translations and editions can vary, so consult the source note when exact wording matters.

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Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

CommunicationDecisionDeepHonestyIntegrityResponsibilityShortTrustTruthUnderstandingWisdom
Related quotations

Continue through nearby ideas

Source identified
“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure.”
Jane Austen · Emma · 1815
Voice: Narrator voice · Narrator

Austen observes that even sincere accounts can contain omission, disguise, or misunderstanding, which makes careful listening and humility important in judging what people say.

Source note: Emma, Volume III, Chapter 13, during the narrator’s reflection on Emma and Mr. Knightley’s conversation.

Source identified
“Tell the truth or trump—but get the trick.”
Mark Twain · Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar · 1894
Voice: Epigraph / fictional source voice · Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar

The joke turns moral advice into card-table strategy, making the line funny precisely because truth and tactical winning are compressed into one impossible-sounding rule.

Source note: Pudd’nhead Wilson, Chapter I epigraph; one of the fictional Calendar maxims Twain places before the chapter.

Source identified
“My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.”
Jane Austen · Pride and Prejudice · 1813
Voice: Fictional character · Fitzwilliam Darcy

Darcy presents trust and esteem as difficult to restore once serious judgment has turned against someone, revealing both the firmness and the potential rigidity of his early character.

Source note: Pride and Prejudice, Chapter XI, Project Gutenberg #1342. Fitzwilliam Darcy says this to Elizabeth Bennet during their discussion of faults; Elizabeth immediately identifies the position as implacable resentment, so the novel itself does not leave the maxim unchallenged.

Source identified
“We must know the truth; and we must avoid error.”
William James · The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy · 1897

James separates two intellectual duties—seeking truth and avoiding falsehood—to show that prioritizing one over the other can produce different habits of belief and inquiry.

Source note: The Will to Believe, essay “The Will to Believe”; Project Gutenberg #26659. James immediately argues that truth-seeking and error-avoidance are distinct laws rather than two phrasings of one command.

Source identified
“Thus reliableness becomes a passport to the general esteem and confidence of mankind.”
Samuel Smiles · Character · 1871

Smiles connects trust with repeated dependability rather than image: people become credible when others learn that their words, knowledge claims and commitments can be relied on in practice.

Source note: Character, Chapter I, “Influence of Character,” Project Gutenberg #2541. The sentence closes Smiles’s paragraph on truthfulness as veracity, rectitude and practical reliableness, explaining why dependable words and actions earn general confidence.